Senator Rand Paul Talks Tech, Civil Liberties, and Keeping the Government Out of Your Email

Rand Paul is having some problems with the jerks back at the office. So today he’s bypassing them on a road trip through Silicon Valley.

It’s not that people don’t like the junior senator from Kentucky. Many want him to seek the Republican nomination for president in 2016. It’s that Paul’s politics lean libertarian, especially when it comes to privacy and national security, and the Senate is where civil liberties go to die. When Paul called for rolling back the Patriot Act, Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) slimed him. When Paul loudly worried about President Obama killing Americans without due process of law, Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) slimed him.

Funny thing, though. In March, when Paul held a dramatic 13-hour protest on the Senate floor excoriating what he saw as the excesses of an endless war, newly elected Republican senators (and even some Democrats) rallied to his side. Like good politicians, they saw that Paul was inspiring a tsunami of popular support: He got 3,500 new Twitter followers in just one hour, all for holding a clinic on C-SPAN in what Washington considers a political albatross. #StandWithRand became a thing.

So he’s taking his show on the road. Today, the Kentuckian is in Silicon Valley, meeting with Facebook, Google and eBay to talk about privacy, tech and civil liberties — as well as to hold swank fundraisers. Paul is hardly an easy sell in liberal California: Some of his positions and comments on civil rights have been, at the least, tone-deaf. Paul’s ongoing challenge is to form a winning political coalition that unites right-wing and left-wing libertarians, and his trip to the center of America’s tech sector is an early test of that coalition’s tensile strength. As he kicked off his tour through the Valley, Paul talked with Danger Room about what comes next.

Danger Room: It’s been about three months since your Senate filibuster. What do you think you’ve changed?

Senator Rand Paul: We have the president thinking about civil liberties and actually responding and saying that he believes in due process. Now if we could just have a little tutorial on what due process is I think we’d be making real progress.

DR: You’re referring to Obama’s claim that Americans accused of terrorism don’t have to be hauled in front of a court before execution?

RP: I just can’t imagine that any kind of definition of due process wouldn’t include a court or a jury or a lawyer, it would include only someone from a political branch of government. It almost seems to be absurd that someone would call that due process. That being said, I’m only talking about an American citizen being targeted. When we’re talking about people fighting in wars or actively engaging in combat, I’m not talking about that either, American citizen or not. But for an American citizen not engaged in combat, due process is not someone who’s an elected politician deciding whether they should die or not.

RP: We’re talking about extraordinary circumstances. I have no doubt that the evidence indicates Awlaki was a bad person and was a terrorist. But I would have tried him for treason. I would have presented the evidence in court. If it was classified, I would have gone into closed session of court. But I still would have had a judge and a jury convicting him. If he won’t come home, he could have been tried in absentia. I would make the process such that he can’t appeal it for a decade or so. You have to have a fairly swift process. But you can’t have someone who runs for office on a political label, someone from the political branch of government [sentence someone]– that’s the real reason we divided the judiciary into a separate and co-equal branch.

RP: I was pleased that he responded to us. He talked about the idea and the need for due process. Disappointed, though, that a constitutional law professor thinks due process doesn’t include a court, a trial, a jury or a lawyer. That concept of due process almost is meaningless. So I’m glad that he’s trying but he needs to try a little harder.

DR: One of the points of your filibuster was to assemble a coalition in Congress on civil liberties issues. How’s that going? You’re running up against right-wing hawks and left-wingers who don’t want to criticize Obama.

RP: Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), I’ve worked with him on some of these issues, as well as Senator Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.). I think there are times we can get together. I’ve worked with Senator Pat Leahy (D-Vt.) on trying to fix the problem of government reading your emails after six months. As well as mandatory minimum sentencing. So I think there’s evidence of a right-left coalition on some civil liberties issues.

RP: I’m all for that. I’m a co-sponsor of a similar bill in the Senate. I’d go one step further: I think any third-party records should be protected by the 4th Amendment. We’ve introduced legislation that says so. In fact, we actually had a vote on an amendment that would do that. So much of our lives are on the internet and so much of our lives are visible in our financial statements. If the government wants to look at that, it should have to show probable cause you’re committing a crime.

DR: You’re in the Valley to meet with Facebook and Google. Neither company is really known for its commitment to privacy, and each makes money off your personal information. So what’s your message to those companies?

RP: That’s not exactly true. I don’t entirely accept that premise. What I would say is you can track with Google, and share some information to get a service. It’s an exchange. As long as it’s part of an exchange and they uphold your contract, I’m all for that. What I worry about is where the government comes in, through the Patriot Act, and says you can’t be sued for giving [subscriber] information to the government. So my message to them will be to stand up and defend privacy. Ultimately, the people going after privacy are the government, and if people mistake Google for government, then we’re in for a big problem. If people begin to mistake Gmail for Government-Mail, they’re liable to get swept up in the same net of people supporting privacy. I see a distinction, and I think it’s in their interest as a company to fight hard for privacy, fight hard to protect the contractual arrangement their customers have with them.

DR: So you’ll try to get them to support your email privacy bill?

RP: Yeah, but I think most of them already support it, to tell you the truth. I don’t know if they have an official position, but I haven’t met anyone out here in California who doesn’t support the concept. It’s actually a very popular concept, and also an indication about how someone who’s a libertarian-leaning Republican can have an appeal in California, not only for Silicon Valley folks but voters in general. Libertarian-Republican issues on privacy are something that can resonate.

Rand Paul speaks to a Tea Party rally in Hawesville, Kentucky, November 2009. Photo: Flickr/Gage Skidmore

DR: Some of your positions on race issues and civil rights have led critics to hold back supporting you on the national-security issues they agree with you on. What do you say to these critics?

RP: No. No.

DR: Just — no, period?

RP: Yeah, I haven’t had any problem. If you’ve seen or read anything I’ve ever written or talked about, you’ll find someone who’s been a great defender of minority rights, a great defender of those who wish to be different, those who are different, those who have different religious beliefs. Those who are of an ethnic group that may be a minority. You’ll find no greater champion of someone who believes that you have rights, privileges and immunities that go beyond what majorities are allowed to do. Most of the bad things that have happened in our country in the past were things where we lost track of the fact that individual rights and freedoms ought to be protected by the Constitution.

DR: You’re going to be holding some fundraisers out in the Valley as well. Are you going to run for president?

RP: I think we would come [to the Valley] either way. I haven’t made a decision on that and won’t for about a year. But I think the Republican party needs to be bigger. One of the reasons I come to California is that the Republican party seems to have given up on California, and my message to those in California is that we’re going to compete nationally as a party, and that includes California. And the way we’re going to compete is by running people for office who can appreciate some issues that attract young people and independents: civil liberties, as well as a less aggressive foreign policy, not putting people in jail for marijuana, a much more tolerant type of point of view. If you have Republican candidates like that then I think all of a sudden you’d find California back in play.

DR: Finally, this is an interview with WIRED, so I have to ask you: Do you consider yourself a gadget person?

RP: A gadget person? No, I’m on the internet every day, but I don’t know if I consider myself a gadget person. I don’t program or code or anything like that. I can use most of the tools that every American teenager can master. Maybe not all of them.